Wanda Jackson, Scala London, review

Elvis Presley's old flame Wanda Jackson was gracious but game and anything but
fusty at the Scala in London, writes Andrew Perry.

Some performers are an enigma, floating nebulously before you without your getting to know who they really are. Wanda Jackson, categorically, is not one of those. The 74-year-old singer from Oklahoma, once dubbed the “Queen of Rockabilly”, arrived whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ to the Leiber & Stoller standard, Riot in Cell Block #9, and, between songs throughout a robust 80-minute performance, she merrily recounted the story of her life. By the time she left, it was hard to imagine that she’d left anything out.

It has been quite a life, though. After starting out as a teenage country singer, her first tour was in 1955, as support act to Elvis Presley – “what a lucky li’l Okey gal”, she noted. They dated briefly, and he encouraged her to sing his “new kinda stuff”. In his honour, she rolled out a fair few Presley numbers, including Good Rockin’ Tonight and Heartbreak Hotel. There were some yodelling numbers, too, from after she reverted to country in the Sixties.

Yet Jackson’s show didn’t feel like an exercise in nostalgia. She crooned Funnel of Love, the brooding 1961 tune whose TV and movie tie-ins sparked her post-millennial popularity. She also flagged up her recent run of American shows with Adele. If her audience was almost entirely a generation or two younger than her, this was thanks largely to her recent album, The Party Ain’t Over, which was produced by Jack White, of White Stripes fame, who, she said, “pushed me hard, right into the 21st century”.

She aired a handful from that record, including Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good, which she admitted she had found too sexually explicit in places: “I said, OK, let’s make this age-appropriate.”

As a performer, Jackson was gracious but game – anything but fusty. She still sang the Winehouse number with a feline purr that bordered on the demonic, and compensated for her nasal, reedy voice with sheer force of personality.

Her young admirers were visibly smitten. As Jackson jigged stage-front in her pink tasselled jacket and inky-black wig, they followed suit, and she warmly kissed a few cheeks in the front row. She finished with a barnstorming Let’s Have a Party: notions of what constitutes a good time may have changed since her teenage years, but Jackson certainly knew how to lead the charge.